Those who were warned, “Your enemies have mobilized their forces against you, so fear them,” the warning only made them grow stronger in faith and they replied, “Allah alone is sufficient as an aid for us and is the best Protector.” (Qur’an 3:173)
One might fast but he gets nothing from his fast except hunger. – The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
Fasting is our sacrifice, it is the life of the soul. Let us sacrifice our body, since the soul has arrived as a guest. – Mawlana Rumi
90 Ramadans ago, at the old age of 81, Shaykh Farhan Sa’adi was executed in cold blood by British colonial forces in Palestine while fasting near the city of Nablus.
Before British bullets—at the behest of the Haganah and Irgun—ripped through his body, did he utter the Prophetic supplication, I wonder, as one usually does one one breaks their fast, “the thirst is gone, the veins are moistened, and the reward is confirmed, if Allah wills”?
Is shahada considered a form of fasting too, when one fasts from life itself, and feasts in the afterlife instead?
Like Imam Hussein, he was martyred thirsty and hungry.
In the Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad said that “the smell of the mouth of a fasting person is better in the sight of God than the smell of musk.”
In Palestinian lamentation lore, when bidding farewell to a shahid, it is common to sing to them in their funerary procession before their burial: “Ma’ as-alameh ya misk fayeh, farewell o fragrant musk, go to your Lord now, to paradise, to the light. Ma’ issalameh ya ghālī ‘a gleibi, farewell, oh dear one to my heart.”
Fragrant starving breath, fragrant decimated bodies.
When did Ramadan become about fragrant, elaborate iftars and indulgent desserts when it was a time of revolt against evil and musk-scented sacrifice?
Shaykh Farhan, born in the village of Mazar in today’s West Bank, would probably be aghast that his homeland was abandoned by billions of Muslims, while they go on 5-star luxury hajj packages and listen to preachers who decry feminism and aqida wars, but are mealy mouthed about the fiqh of living under pervasive tyranny in this New Dark Age…
(Read the full article at the Sermons at the Court Substack.)
